


The Boy You Met (At The Coin Laundry)

by Lee_Whimsy



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Vacation Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 01:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lee_Whimsy/pseuds/Lee_Whimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo accidentally spends a summer in Ireland.   One rainy day, Thorin appears in the hotel laundry room, naked and dripping wet and about to propose.  (But not, unfortunately, to Bilbo.)  </p>
<p>Gandalf, Thranduil, and a handful of Spanish footballers all guest-star.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy You Met (At The Coin Laundry)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Как я встретил этого парня](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2615363) by [ho_ra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ho_ra/pseuds/ho_ra)



> Originally posted on tumblr for a wonderful anon.

Bilbo was sitting on top of the washing machine, kicking his bare feet against the white metal.  He was only a few pages away from the end of his book when someone coughed, but it was a very rude sort of cough, so Bilbo felt perfectly justified in ignoring it. 

Cough.

Bilbo turned a page, wondering if SACEUR would see reason and agree to a ceasefire with the Soviets.

Cough, cough.

He hadn’t expected General Alekseyev to survive, especially after CINC-West had been executed by the Politburo.  Maybe the Blackhawk would open fire?

“Excuse me,” said the stranger.  A very attractive baritone voice, with a soft Yorkshire accent, and currently _very_ pissed off.  “But your laundry was done half an hour ago."

“Yes, it was,” Bilbo said.  He didn’t look up. 

“Unfuckingbelievable,” the stranger said.  “That had better be one good book.”

Wordlessly, Bilbo held up the brick-sized tome.  The buzzer on the washer went off again.  It had been ringing for quite a while, now that Bilbo thought about it.

“Right,” said the stranger, after a long pause.  “That’s a good book.  But I still need to do my laundry, so move the fuck out of the way.  Please.”

There was a vague note of desperation in his voice now, and Bilbo finally looked up.  Oh.

_Oh_. 

“You’re naked,” And gorgeous, he almost blurted out, but didn’t.  “Why are you naked?”

The stranger held up a single pair of jeans and a t-shirt with _Real Madrid_ emblazoned across the chest.  Both were dripping wet and spotted with mud.  “Ryanair lost my suitcases.  I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week now, and I have a date in an hour.  So can you please just get over yourself and move your clothes?” 

The desperation was more palpable now.  “A date,” Bilbo said, unable to completely hide his disappointment.  “Oh, well, in that case.”  He carefully replaced his bookmark and hopped down from the washer.  “I’m Bilbo, since you didn’t ask.  Nice to meet you.”

“Thorin.  Can you hurry it up a little?”

Bilbo, who had been pulling his clothes out of the washer, starting putting them one by one into the dryer, moving slowly and deliberately.  “Nice to meet you too, Bilbo,” he parroted.  “Thank you so much for interrupting your reading to help me, Bilbo.  Could I buy you a pint at The Anchor tonight to make up for it, Bilbo?”

Thorin glowered at him.  “Funny.”

As soon as Bilbo was out of the way, Thorin hurried forward and tossed his sad little bundle of clothing into the washer, then slammed the door shut and reached for his pockets—

Which he didn’t have.  Because he was naked.

“Fuck,” he said, with great feeling.  He kicked the washer, then kicked it again, as if a euro or two might magically fall out. 

Bilbo sighed.  He felt sorry for him, even if he was rude.  And wore Real Madrid t-shirts.  “Here,” he said, fishing a few assorted coins of his pocket and holding them out to Thorin.  “Now you owe me two drinks.”

Thorin accepted the change warily, as if Bilbo might suddenly snatch it away.  “Thanks,” he said.  “I guess.”

“You’re welcome.  I guess.”  Bilbo started the dryer and leaned against the closed door, opening his book up again.  “Are you sticking around?”

“No, I’m going to run nude around the harbor in the rain.”

It had been drizzling since Bilbo had woken up that morning.  Then again, it was usually raining in southeastern Ireland.  “What were you doing, anyway?  Rolling around in mud puddles?”

Thorin glanced down at his sodden, dirty clothes.  “I got lost.”

Bilbo wondered how you managed to get lost in a tiny seaside resort town.   “Right.  Well, lucky for you the hotel has a coin laundry.”

Thorin didn’t say anything.  He looked at the clock and ran a hand distractedly through his messy dark hair.  

They stood in silence for a while, the washer and drying humming discordantly in the background.  Bilbo flipped through the last few pages of his book, but he couldn’t concentrate; he kept on sneaking glances at Thorin, who caught him once and scowled.  Bilbo hurriedly returned to his book.  His cheeks were flushed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s okay,” Thorin said, almost a minute later.  “It is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Bilbo considered lying, and decided against it.  “Just a little.  I mean, what did the front desk say when you walked past?”

“I made a break for it when no one was looking,” Thorin said.  “But there was a tour group in the lobby.  I think one of the old ladies saw me.”

Bilbo clapped a hand to his mouth, trying to hide his grin.  It didn’t work.  “Why didn’t you just put on a towel or something?  Or wait until you got down here to get naked?”

Thorin stared at him blankly for a moment.  “I, er—never thought about it,” he said, dropping his head into his hands.  “God.  I’m a wreck.” 

“It must be a pretty big date.”

“It is,” Thorin said, muffled.  His face was still buried in his hands.  “There was a ring in my suitcase.  The one that got lost.  That’s why I’m here, actually.  In Ireland, in a town where I know exactly one person, staying in a hotel I can’t afford.”

“Oh,” Bilbo said.  He had the strangest feeling that he had accidentally stumbled across something very important.  Like an extra walking into a movie script just before the pivotal scene, oblivious to the drama unfolding around him.  “Congratulations.  Maybe?”

“Maybe.  And showing up naked won’t do me any favors.  So here I am, hiding in the hotel laundry room.”

“I don’t know,” said Bilbo, lips still crooked in a smile.  “You could propose to _me_ naked.  If you wanted to.”

Thorin looked up at that, eyes wide.  This time, he was the one to blush and glance away.  “I’ll, er.  I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

A buzzer rang.  They both jumped a little. 

“Dryer,” Thorin said, needlessly.   “I’ll just—”

Bilbo scrounged around for loose change again, and came up exactly even.  “Here,” he said.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s three drinks I owe you now,” said Thorin. 

Bilbo nodded, trying for nonchalance.  He reminded himself that this man was about to _propose_ to someone.  “We can celebrate your engagement,” he said. 

All of a sudden, Thorin looked a little sickly.  “Here’s to hoping.”

Bilbo, wretchedly conscious of his own selfishness, couldn’t quite bring himself to wish Thorin good luck, so he collected his laundry and settled for a vague “I’ll see you around, then.” 

He went back to his hotel room and flopped down on the bed, cursing himself for being his usual impossible self and shamelessly flirting with someone who was about to get engaged. 

 It was only later that afternoon, when the rain had slackened to a misty drizzle and Thorin was no doubt long gone, that Bilbo realized he’d left his new favorite book sitting on top of the dryer.  When he went back to retrieve it, the laundry room was empty, and the book was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

When Bilbo had first arrived in Ireland, he’d told the customs agent that he would be staying for a week.  Two weeks at most.  His parents had left him an alarming amount of money when they died, and his four years at community college had barely put a dent in his bank account, so Bilbo decided to celebrate his graduation with the stereotypical summer romp across Europe.  Start off nice and quiet, spend a few days in Ireland, fly to London and take it from there.  Leaving the rest of his itinerary blank added a certain kind of excitement, he thought.  Almost like an adventure.

A week or two, he had said to the customs agent. 

That was three months ago.

Because Bilbo had discovered that he quite liked Ireland.  He liked the misty green hills and rocky beaches.  He liked the local rugby team, and the Japanese game shows that were always playing on his tiny little television set.   He especially liked his hotel manager, an old man who knew all the best pubs in the country and smoked his pipe in blatant disregard for the _No Smoking_ signs posted at every entrance to the hotel.

So Bilbo had stayed, and stayed, and stayed.  And except for the occasional longing look at flights to the Madrid-Barajas airport and the price of season tickets for Barcelona, he was entirely content. 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and Bilbo couldn’t stay in the country forever.  Ninety days was the limit, and he was about to run up against it.   So it was with a heavy heart that one Monday morning, a few days after the laundry room incident, he biked down to his favorite beach for the last time.  Stradbally Cove was sheltered and sandy, with low rocky cliffs rising sharply on either side of the water and curving out along the shore.  There was a cave just barely visible across the cove; Bilbo had always intended to go spelunking, but he’d never gotten around to it.  

Today, with only drifting white clouds overhead, Bilbo decided to clamber up onto one of the huge rocks scattered on the beach nearest the cliffs.  He picked the most comfortable of the lot, warmed by the late summer sun and mostly sheltered from the brisk wind.  

There had been wild strawberries growing near the road, and he had carefully wrapped his small harvest in a napkin and kept them in his pocket.  Now he pulled them out, a little squished but still sweet, and perfect for a midmorning snack.  He pulled a book out of his pack—the one that had gone missing in the laundry room had yet to reappear, much to Bilbo’s irritation—and settled down with every intention of staying until his stomach started grumbling for dinner. 

Several lazy hours later, he emerged from the exploits of the indefatigable Jack Ryan to discover that there was a slight problem with his plan.

“Oh,” he said, unhappily, looking down at the water lapping around the edges of his rock.  The beach had receded at least thirty feet, and the tide was still coming in.   He was completely surrounded by ocean, and it wouldn’t take long for his rock to vanish entirely under the water. 

He thought he saw one lone person on the other side of the cove, on the trail that meandered down from the main road, but there was no point in shouting or waving.  What could they do? 

There was only one thing for it.  Bilbo carefully packed up his things, held his pack valiantly over his head, and jumped into the water.

It came up a little higher than his waist, and wading back to shore involved so much splashing, to say nothing of the waves, that he was completely soaked by the time he straggled back to dry land.  His clothes clung and chafed uncomfortably, and water sloshed in his shoes as he walked across the cove to retrieve his bike.  It would be a drippy, miserable ride back to town.   He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least no one had seen his unexpected journey into the water, which meant he could lie shamelessly about it and no one would be any the wiser.

It was at that point that he looked up the trail and saw a very familiar figure standing beside his bike.  This time, at least, he was actually wearing clothes.

“You’re dripping,” Thorin said, arms crossed as he watched Bilbo approach. “It hasn’t even started raining yet.  Did you decide it was a nice day for a swim?”

Bilbo huffed.  “I was on one of the rocks, and I lost track of time.”

“I don’t see any rocks.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Bilbo saw that his rock was now completely underwater.  “Yes, well.  There was a rock.  A very comfortable rock.”

“Let me guess,” Thorin said.  “You were reading.”

Bilbo’s prolonged silence was confirmation enough.  This time it was Thorin’s turn to grin.  Bilbo couldn’t help but notice that he looked even handsomer when he smiled, which was completely unfair.   “What are you even doing here?” he said,

 “Walking,” Thorin said.  The _what does it look like, you idiot?_ was only heavily implied. 

Bilbo took off his shoes, poured the water out of them, and wrung out his mismatched plaid socks.  “All the way from town?” he asked.

Thorin shrugged.  “Lots to think about.”

“Oh, right!  How did your date go—did he say yes?”  Bilbo realized belatedly that he didn’t actually know Thorin was gay.  It had seemed obvious enough to him, but it would be an embarrassing mistake to make.  And he’d been wrong before.

Apparently, this wasn’t one of those times.  “No,” Thorin said.  “He didn’t.”

“Oh.  That’s—well.  I’m sorry.”  Bilbo scrambled for something else to say.  “Are you leaving, then?  I mean, you said he was the only person you knew here—you know what, never mind.  It’s none of my business.”

“No, it isn’t,” Thorin agreed.  Then he smiled again, a little softer and more wistful.  “But now I know you too, don’t I?”

Bilbo’s heart did a ridiculous somersault at that.  “I guess you do.  But, er.  I should probably head back.  Dry off, change clothes.”   The wind had picked up, and his shirt felt clammy against his damp skin.   He was already shivering.

“You can borrow my sweatshirt, if you want.  My suitcase finally showed up.”

He knew he should let Thorin have his space, give him time to get over his recent rejection, but he didn’t have the willpower to say no.  Especially when Thorin’s hair was ruffled like that, and his voice was so deep and kind, and he was smiling just a little. 

“Thanks,” Bilbo said, softly.

“It’ll be a little big on you,” Thorin said.  “But it’s warm.”

_A little big_ was an understatement.  Thorin was at least six feet tall, with broad shoulders and the lean muscled figure of someone who wasn’t a stranger to hard work.  Bilbo, on the other hand, was too short to reach the top shelves in his kitchen.  When he put the sweatshirt on, the hem fell to his mid-thighs, and he had to roll the sleeves up twice just to hold the handlebars on his bike.  He had no doubt he looked completely ridiculous. 

But the cotton was still warm, worn soft from hundreds of washings.  Bilbo stopped shivering almost instantly.  “Thanks,” he said again.  “This is great.  I’ll drop it off at the front desk, if you want.”

Thorin nodded.  It was only after Bilbo had said goodbye and pedaled halfway toward the road that Thorin blurted out: “I’m in Room 140.  You could just bring it around, if you want.  I’ll be back in a few hours.”

 Bilbo stopped.  “Right,” he called back, a little shaky.  “Yeah.  I can do that.” 

He spent the rest of the ride back into town wondering what, exactly, he’d just gotten himself into.  It didn’t help that he kept thinking of Thorin’s hesitant little smile, and how nice his sweatshirt smelled: like cinnamon and spice and wood smoke.   It reminded him of the crisp autumn days back home, but he didn’t feel even a little homesick. 

There was nothing for him back in the States except an empty house and a part-time job at his cousin’s bookstore.  But soon it would be September, and he couldn’t stay in Ireland much longer. 

So once he left, where was he going to go?

* * *

Bilbo knocked on the door to Room 140 with significantly more bravado than he felt, the sweatshirt washed and dried and neatly folded up in his arms.  Barely a second later, the door swung open.  Thorin loomed up on the other side of the threshold.  Had he been waiting by the door for Bilbo to turn up?

“Thank you,” he said gruffly, accepting the sweatshirt when Bilbo wordlessly handed it to him.  “I hope it helped.”

“It was perfect,” said Bilbo.

They stood there for what felt like a small eternity, not quite meeting each other’s eyes.   Thorin cleared his throat, but said nothing; Bilbo shifted his weight from side to side, fiddling with the hem of his cardigan.  

“I should probably—” Bilbo began, just as Thorin said: “I have your book.  You left it in the laundry room.”

“Oh!  I wondered where it went.”

“I meant to leave it at the front desk for you, but I—” Thorin shrugged, looking a trifle embarrassed.  “I never got around to it.  You can come in while I get it, if you’d like.  It’s somewhere around here.”

It turned out that ‘somewhere around here’ actually meant ‘sitting by the coffee pot in plain sight’, but Bilbo pretended not to notice it while Thorin made a production of hunting around the room.  

“A-ha,” he said, several minutes later, when Bilbo had finally stopped standing around and instead perched himself on the edge of the bed, listening to the familiar crashes and tinny shrieks of _Takeshi’s Castle_ playing on the small television in the corner.  “Here it is.  Tom Clancy.  So you like war stories, then?”

He tossed the book in Bilbo’s direction with the easy, confident grace of someone who had always been picked first during gym class and was probably the star forward of every school football team he’d ever been on.   Bilbo, who frequently tripped over his own two abnormally large feet, fumbled the catch and knocked the book onto the carpeted floor.  

“I like adventure stories,” Bilbo said, kneeling down to retrieve it.  “What about you?”

Thorin shrugged.  “My father was a military man.  So was my grandfather.  I guess it’s in the family.”

“Oh, are you a soldier?” Bilbo asked.

“I was, but they kicked me out of the army,” Thorin said, with a painful sort of casualness.  “And out of my house.” Bilbo tried think of something to say, but Thorin didn’t give him the chance.  “I still owe you those drinks.  Would you like to go out?  The Anchor’s a bit crowded for my tastes, but we could drop by Merry’s.”

“I’d like that,” Bilbo said, and immediately checked himself.  “Oh, shit.  No.  I can’t.”

 “Right,” said Thorin, suddenly still and formal.  “Of course.  I’m sorry if I’ve kept you—”

Bilbo interrupted him.  “No, you don’t understand.  I really would love to go.  But my team is playing tonight.”

“Your team?”

Bilbo paused.  He hadn’t forgotten that Thorin was the sort of heathen who wore Real Madrid t-shirts on his dates.  “Er.  I’m a bit of a football fan.  Well, soccer.  You know.”

“The only game on tonight is Barcelona and Málaga,” Thorin said.  “At least, the only one worth caring about.  Don’t tell me that you run around cheering for that sanctimonious brat Messi?”

“Don’t even get me started,” said Bilbo.  “Lionel Messi is one of the best forwards we’ve ever had, and if we want to talk sanctimonious, we don’t have to look much farther than Cristiano Ronaldo, so—”

Thorin raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender.  “A bit of a football fan?” he echoed.  “How does an American end up going mad for a Spanish football team, anyway?”

Bilbo relented with something close to good grace.   “My dad was born in Brighton, and mom was always haring off to foreign cities,” he said.  “They met in Catalonia.  She fell in love with Barcelona as much as with dad.”

“And so you did, too?”

Bilbo nodded.  “Even after they moved to the States, she spent half her life daydreaming about her old haunts in the great old European cities.  Montmartre, Palau de la Música Catalana.  That kind of thing.  Barcelona was her favorite.”

“Was,” Thorin said, carefully. 

He probably didn’t need the confirmation.  Bilbo nodded anyway.  “Dead.    Three years ago, now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happens.  That’s why I’m here, anyway.  Thought I would go on an adventure of my own, just like mom used to do.” 

He scrounged up the remote and changed the channel, and they waited for the game to start.  Thorin sat fidgeting on the opposite side of the bed from Bilbo for a minute or two, then jumped up and fetched a case of beer from the tiny hotel room fridge.  “I do still owe you a drink,” he said, by way of explanation.

Bilbo would have gladly traded a dozen cases of beer for a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, but you didn’t live in Ireland for three months without learning to appreciate stouts.  He accepted the proffered Guinness and leaned up against the headboard of the bed, drawing his knees up to his chest.  Rain had started to patter again the window, and Thorin hadn’t bothered to turn on the heat; his thin cardigan wasn’t quite enough to keep him warm.  That was Ireland in the summer for you.

“If you’re trying to steal my sweatshirt again, it’s not going to work,” Thorin told him, settling down beside him and stretching his legs out.  “You’re making me watch ninety minutes of Barcelona.  You can shiver all evening, as far as I’m concerned.”

But in fact Thorin was surprisingly gracious about everything, and he only made fun of Messi occasionally.  When Barcelona started losing just after halftime—three perfect opportunities following hard upon each other, all wasted, and Xavi’s passing uncharacteristically off—he wrapped an arm around Bilbo’s shoulders, and the casual embrace kept him even warmer than the stolen sweatshirt would have.

(In the end, it all worked out.  Barcelona won, and Bilbo worked up the courage to kiss Thorin quite thoroughly in celebration.  He knocked over Thorin’s bottle of beer in the process, and soaked both their clothes and the comforter in the dark sticky foam, but Thorin ignored the mess.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, tangling his fingers in Bilbo’s messy curling hair.  “There’s a coin laundry just downstairs.”)

* * *

Bilbo left for London the next morning.  He stopped at the front desk one last time, dropped off his room keys, and was saying his goodbyes to Mr. Gray when a tall blond man of the absurdly handsome variety breezed in the front door, passing Bilbo without a second glance. 

“Is Thorin Oakenshield still staying here?” he asked.

Mr. Gray looked at the blond from underneath his bushy eyebrows and blew a smoke ring in his general direction.  “Possibly,” he said.

“That means yes.  Give him this, will you?  He already knows I don’t want it.”  The blond set a small ring box on the polished marble.  “And tell him that I said goodbye.”

“I’m not a carrier pigeon,” Mr. Grey said, crossly.  “Tell him yourself.”  He pointedly turned back to Bilbo.  “Have a lovely autumn, Mr. Baggins.  I suppose we’ll see you back one day.”

“I hope so,” Bilbo said, tearing his eyes away from the mysterious man who had rejected Thorin’s offer of marriage.  The curiosity was almost unbearable, but he had promised himself that he wouldn’t pry.   Much.  “There’s an apartment for rent just a few blocks away from King’s Cross.  Thorin knows the landlord.  We’ll see how it all turns out.”

The blond made a small, surprised noise and looked down at Bilbo.  His blue eyes were sharp.  “So he did meet someone.  I thought so,” he said.  “Good luck.  For Thorin Oakenshield, you’ll need it.”

Bilbo had an inkling that the other man was quite right, but he only shrugged.  “It sounds like an adventure,” he said, and tucked his hands in the front pocket of the oversized sweatshirt he was wearing.  “And I’ve been wanting one of those for ages.”


End file.
